Lowes: “We had a difficult weekend, but we will learn”

Sam Lowes is forced to concede his championship lead after ending sixth in France, not quite able to get his bike to turn.

Having only once cracked the top five throughout the course of the French GP, Sam Lowes didn’t quite seem himself over the weekend. Front-end issues when turning his Kalex persisted throughout the event and limited his potential. Lining in ninth place, Lowes didn’t have the start he wanted and was unable to make any serious gains when the race commenced. This traffic allowed the leaders to get away and the Brit spent the rest of the Monster Energy Grand Prix de France playing catch up, working hard in the last few laps to try and close in on fourth place. Unable to do so, Lowes concluded the race in sixth, his championship rival Alex Rins (Paginas Amarillas HP 40) taking victory. As a result Lowes lost the lead in the title race and is now five points back on the Spaniard as the championship prepares to head to Mugello for round six. It's still neck and neck in the title battle, Lowes and Rins each having strong and not so strong weekends during the start of the year.

Sam Lowes: “In the final stages of the race I pushed really hard to try to grab the fourth place, but actually I was not able to be fast. I was struggling with the front end and to make the bike turn on corner entry, but we must look at the positives: in a race where we saw several crashes we picked up good points for the championship and I’m happy for that. The Championship is still long and we are just 5 points behind Rins in the standings. We made some mistakes Friday during practice and honestly we had a difficult weekend, but we will learn from that: now we look forward to Mugello, a track that I really love!”